Canada providing additional funding to fight Ebola

World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Margaret Chan (L) sits next to Keiji Fukuda, WHO's assistant director general for health security, as he addresses the media after a two-day meeting of its emergency committee on Ebola, in Geneva August 8, 2014. West Africa's raging epidemic of Ebola virus is an "extraordinary event" and now constitutes an international health risk, the WHO said on Friday. REUTERS/Pierre Albouy

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QMI Agency

Aug 9, 2014

, Last Updated: 11:31 AM ET

Canada committed an additional $3.6 million Friday to contain and fight the Ebola outbreak in the West Africa region.

The feds gave $1 million to Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders "to provide adequate isolation and protection measures to reduce and contain the spread of the Ebola virus and to provide care to the affected population."

And $2.6 million was given to the United Nations World Health Organization "to strengthen the field response to the outbreak and mitigate associated threats to health and security."

To date, Canada has donated $5,010,000 to battle the spread of the virus in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone.

On Friday, Nigeria declared a national state of emergency over the growing health crisis -- one that has caused the World Health Organization to call the outbreak an "extraordinary event."

That same day, a patient who recently returned from a trip to Nigeria and developed fever and flu-like symptoms triggered an Ebola virus scare at a Toronto-area hospital.